With the US becoming bogged down in Iraq, how ready might the European Union (EU) be to pick up the slack in global affairs left by the diminishment of American power? My clear impression is that the EU is too divided and too concerned with pressing internal issues to provide any real alternative to the role the US plays in world affairs. Expect China and India to fill that vacuum instead.

Back in 1989, the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall led many Europeans to dream of a Europe that might act as a single, strong, democratic force in world affairs. Since then, the EU has expanded. Now it has 27 members and a combined population of 495 million. And that expansion has benefited all Europeans.

A few years ago, many Western Europeans worried about an influx of cheap labour from Eastern Europe, symbolised by the “Polish plumber.” But most Britons warmly welcomed the many well-trained Polish workers who arrived. And today, immigrants from Poland and other Eastern European nations seem well integrated in workplaces throughout Western Europe. The Continent has also become a strong magnet for economic migrants from Africa, both north and south of the Sahara.

Whole areas of London are now a Babel of different tongues, spoken by young people from across the Continent who come there to learn what has become the EU’s lingua franca. Here in Lille, France, I have been teaching a short course on international affairs — in English — at the city’s Institut d’Études Politiques. Like many of France’s other state-run universities, this institute now requires that students gain some proficiency in English — quite a change in the country’s educational policy!

France just had the first round of its exciting presidential election. Britain, too, is preparing for an election, and this one could be more significant than most outsiders realise. This is the May 3 election for the third semi-independent Scottish Parliament to sit since this body was created back in 1999. The incoming Scottish Parliament might soon demand Scotland’s complete secession from the union.

At the continental level, political integration has been held back in recent years by two major wedges: foreign policy and the EU Constitution. In the absence of a unified EU foreign policy, individual countries have continued to chart their own course. The failure to ratify the Constitution stems from arguments over specific matters of law.

Today’s Europe is an exciting place to be. Most European economies are humming. The publics are dealing with challenging issues of governance, including how to build a multicultural community. But there isn’t much appetite for running the wider world as well. As the US deals with the challenges that lie ahead in Iraq and elsewhere, it won’t find a strong, unified Europe standing at its side. Perhaps the best help European countries can provide is to reassure Americans that life can still be good even after a retrenchment from global empire. — The Christian Science Monitor